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In Prov 22:11 Solomon said, The king shall be his friend. If you want King Jesus to be your friend then you will love certain things he loves. King Jesus will be your friend if you:

Love the Lord – Jn 14:21; Matt 22:36-38 – Jesus said, “he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father” – now that’s a guarantee – the best way to be loved by God is to love God.

Love your spouse – Eph 5:25; Prov 19:14; Prov 18:22 – in our desire to please and love the Lord we also need to please and love our spouses [1 Cor 7:32-34] – when you consider that a prudent wife is from the Lord and that a man who finds a wife obtains favor of the Lord, you’d better love her – it will mess up your prayer life if you don’t [1 Pet 3:7] – and it will mess up your friendship with God if you don’t.

Love the brethren – 1 Jn 4:10-12; 1 Jn 4:20 – God loved us so much that he gave his Son to be the propitiation for our sins – in the same way that he loves us we are to love one another – and when we do, God dwells in us and his love is perfected in us – if you want to be a friend of God then love the folks that he loves.

Love God’s words – Ps 119:163-167; Jn 14:23-24 – you love God’s words and God will love you – it’s one thing to say that you love God’s words but it is altogether a different thing to demonstrate that love by what you do with God’s book – read it, study it, memorize it, tell others about it, defend it, and publish it if you really love it.

Love pureness of heart – Prov 22:11; 1 Jn 3:2-3 – if you love God, love your spouse, love the brethren and love God’s words, they are going to have an effect on your heart – your heart needs to be pure – God looketh on your heart and God loves a person with a pure heart – and if your heart is not pure, he will know it – if it is pure, he will also know it and so will others because it will manifest itself in the grace of your lips.

Love not the world – 1 Jn 2:15-16; Jas 4:4 – if you want to be an enemy of God then just love this world – there are many professing Christians who love this world more than they love God [2 Tim 3:4] and they don’t realize that they are the enemies of God – so as you draw closer to the Lord by loving him, your spouse, the brethren, his words and pureness of heart more, you will find that you are drawing further and further away from the world – and if you are not drawing away from the world you do not love the Lord as much as you think you do.

Conclusion: We should be at the point in our lives where our greatest desire is to please the Lord and to know that he is our friend – if you will love these five things clearly identified in the Bible and will not love the world, you are guaranteed to be a friend of the Lord Jesus Christ.